December 27, 2012

With Tom on
the move yesterday and many of our other regulars busy making final preparations
for Christmas, it was a quiet evening for our final life drawing session of this
year. According to prediction by the Ancient Mayans it may even have been our
last session, full stop! They predict a cataclysmic event today. What will it
be? As I type I can see the fog rolling down the hill towards the studio. At
least I hope it’s fog. Aaaaaaargh! Grayson Perry came up with a phrase, which if
we all took on board could save us all a lot of worry and heartache - “Hold your
beliefs lightly!” I predict we’ll all be back in the New
Year.

Despite it
being the end of term nobody brought any toys or games in for us to play with
and I left the Muppets Christmas Carol video in the shop, so we had no
alternative other than to get on with some life drawing.

Whenever we
hold our life sessions I’m always staggered by the ambition shown by the members
of the group. At half time Dick clearly displayed his disappointment with how
his painting was going. How far should we reasonably expect to get in 75
minutes? Martin Gayford, in his book “Man with a blue scarf” talks about being
painted by Lucien Freud. After sitting through an entire evening he expected to
see significant progress in his portrait and was clearly disappointed to see
that the great master, Freud, had managed to resolve just one eyebrow over the
course of the evening. Freud of course had the great luxury of knowing that his
models would turn up day after day, week after week in order to help him realize
his ambitions. And boy did he reward their faith! His exhibition at the NPG
earlier this year was definitely one of the highlights of the past twelve
months.

Our sessions,
unlike Freud’s, are always time-limited with the deadline never much further
than a breath away. I thought it was a difficult pose, admirably held by our
model for the evening, Suzi, with many tricky problems to solve, but by the end
of the session I thought Dick had produced an admirable piece of work,
displaying lively handling and a strong composition. I think much of our
Thursday evening work benefits from its unfinishedness, which creates this
liveliness and gives the work a real vitality.

It’s Friday
morning now and I want to get back to painting, so I’m not going to prattle on
any further. Remember we start back on Thursday 3rd January with
model Justin, followed by our first Saturday on 5th Januarywith
model Julie. Look forward to seeing you all then. I know that Tom would join me
in wishing everyone a Happy Christmas with all best wishes for a successful,
happy and healthy New Year. Similarly, I’m sure that everyone would join me in
wishing Tom and Elaine all the best in their new adventure living by the
sea.

December 14, 2012

Steven was telling us he
had been to see White Christmas only recently and it set me to thinking if only
Christmas was so magical as it once was. I remember as a child my father taking
my brother and myself to the cinema in Dewsbury to see the same film, ‘White
Christmas’, on a dark dismal winter afternoon and when we came out after the
film, we could not believe what we saw, it actually had snowed and was white
everywhere. Like Steven I cannot recall
what the story of the film was yet I remember so clearly the song and that
magical moment of seeing the snow outside the cinema has stayed with me.

How do I link this to last night’s session of life
drawing, well I don’t really know but it is to do with what experiences give us
lasting pleasure and memories which might just have a little bit of magic about
them.

This is the season of spend, shopping, spend, searching,
spend, fretting, spend and more spend on meaningful presents which will bring
happiness to our loved ones. Do they last? Not if they are kids’ toys they
don’t, they would rather have the box they came in and someone to sit in the box
with them and maybe those memories will be the lasting ones.

So what of magic and meaningful moments? All life
drawing sessions are magical in their own way as we are all part of a group of
artists together in a large studio then usually as soon as the session starts we
instantly and separately float off into another dimension where only our self
and the sitter exist in a sort of nebulous and transcendental space. We are like
rabbits caught in the light, we inhabit a very special bubble and we create
another reality of the image before us. No two pictures of the same model are alike or
tell the same story and when we are old and grey, (well, older and greyer than I
already am) will Thursdays at Red Brick be abiding and recorded
memories?

So, perhaps the
more we look at each picture the more we will see. Can we see the magic? Can we
feel the magic? Well, we can if we believe in magic and it all depends on what
sort of magic we are looking for and whether or not we are able to recognise
magic when it is before us.

The most obviously
magical for me is the featured painting by Teresa, the choice and mix of
colour and the beautiful passages created as if she has been composing a piece
of music, the whole put together is so lyrical. Like magic it cannot be
sequentially put into words, there is no chemical formula, it came together and
it just exists.

Study, no really
study Ben’s portrait of
Joseph and against a black background
the profiled head becomes a real person alive in colour yet distinct from a
separate colourless body. Ben worked
solidly on this for the length of the session; he infused life into it and made
a portrait we can believe in.

Cathy somehow manages to catch the character of Joseph,
the attitude of the stance, its solidity, the varying stresses of lines and
marks all making one homogenous whole which stands firmly planted and lets us
know without any hint of background detail that he is firmly on this
earth.

The drawing by David of Joseph is one which appears to
me to have the aim of capturing the essence of Joseph. Now that is a magical thing to aim for. He
describes the shape in space which Joseph fills, so that when Joseph leaves that space the impression is still there
writ down.

In this almost enigmatic portrait of Joseph by Fiona I am so drawn to the eyes. What lies behind
them? What is before them? All the other head and facial details are there but
they could just as well not be, so compulsive are the eyes and there is
that ‘je ne sais quoi’ in this drawing
which tells you the model was actually there before the
artist.

There is a somewhat classical note in Roger’s portrait
of Joseph, a Hellenic Hero, almost contrarily yet delicately executed in the
soft medium of pastel, yet still there is a fascination to it which defies
interpretation.

Nobody does it better,

Makes me feel sad for the rest

Nobody does it half as good as you

Baby you’re the best!

Roger S, that wonderful natural application of
watercolour on paper, describing the human form so seemingly effortlessly and
your second drawing of the night. You just go with it follow your instincts and
voila! - magic!

Steven it is a journey on
which we follow you every step of the way and this is a truly beautiful drawing.
The seen and measured steps seem to present a blueprint for the artist as the
creator of that perfect model and not the illustrator, as if he was not there
before you drew him. What’s another word for magic?

Wonderful sensuous shades, shapes, rhythm and colours
contrast so well against the blue/green background and emphasise the full length
and elegance of the back. It has a rather languorous, nonchalant air about it.
Sue’s painting brings to mind

‘The Lotus
Eaters’

In the afternoon they came to a land

In which it seemed always afternoon

All around the coast the languid air did swoon. …(‘What
sort of cheese was that?’)

Tom’s lovely illuminated
form is so otherworldly in spite of the lights conking out. No not
Tom’s! Rather Tom’s drawing of Joseph’s illuminated form. This painted abstracted
image is so what floats around the outer reaches of my imagination but which I
cannot capture and translate into paint or form.

Another word for
magic- -- enchantment.

Tony is so dedicated that
fortified by a hot water bottle he tried valiantly to ignore the pain in his
back, yet despite this the spell was still cast and he produced his well studied
drawing of Joseph. He uniquely finds
fine details, planes and facets and describes these forms and shapes with darks
and lights in many various shades of grey.

There are no more nice words for magic, well there could
be but I am brain dead.

December 07, 2012

Do you remember the 'Community Theatre Group' in the League of Gentleman? They were memorably called, 'Legs Akimbo', and for some reason I spent the whole evening with that fantastic word,'Akimbo', fluttering around in my head. This developed into 'Legs Astrideo', 'Hips Aswivelo' and the memorable 'Thighs Athrusto', surely a character for my next novel. Sue, a real novelist provided the inspiration for this lexicon of characters, released from her cage of confinement and with a low table as a prop, she presented us with a series of tableaux from the unchained slave girl (a Victorian favourite amongst eroto-sculptors with a classical bent) to the Paula Rego classic, Dog Woman. No complaints about viewpoint as the twenty minute rotation meant what you lost on the swings you undoubtably gained on the roundabout and so it was, one challenge arriving after the other, each pose a prompt to look hard, pay attention, even those at the back and get looking because more than anything this is an exercise in perception and processing.

For some of us the ride is breathtaking, we hold on and hope for the best, for others, there is a planned considered approach with a strategy being played out and the work is a designed thing with drawings distributed evenly, a consistent method of approach, each twenty minute used efficiently and effectively, no one drawing is favoured above another. I like this, it's like a good teacher ensuring everyone gets their fair share of attention, but I also like Ian's ragged supply teacher approach where breathlessly he manages the latest crises. I almost imagine his look of surprise as the pose ends and another takes it's place, he scrambles for the paint, any colour will do and dashes down a record with all the intuitive urgency of a solitary witness recording an ever receding number plate. It's good and honest and true without the prissy artifice of art and I like that.

Yesterday was a day for drawing and there were some good ones, the brittle line of Sandra stands out to me in both pieces of work as does Ivan's merciless observations, Andrew's robust, no nonsense approach chimes with Sue's relentless objectivity. Patrick's drawing more than anything reminded me of a grainy photograph of a detail from Rodin's masterpiece, 'The Gates of Hell', all writhing bodies and despair, it has the fin de siecle feeling of a tear in the skin of a civilized world (must stop thinking about bloody George Osborne)!

Hilary got organized, no faffing about or false starts, it was hands and feet and that's it, next week it could possibly be knees and toes or heads and shoulders, we shall have to wait and see. Whichever it is, there is no questioning the acuity of the observation and the honesty of the endeavour, the information gathered and the quality of each is outstanding. It's a drawing that you feel could be used, a functional drawing, a genuine study towards something greater. I remember once looking at the countless pages of drawings Singer Sargent made towards his great mural at the Boston Public Library.

In his drawings you can see real information being gathered and absorbed whilst solutions to visual problems are found. I'm sure when Hilary next draws a hand or foot, whatever the pose, she will find it so much easier and her drawing will have within it the authority of real acquired knowledge. It was a good use of an evening ,which was true for everyone, the shame was, there wasn't more of us but I daresay short poses don't necessarily appeal to all.

My paintings are trying to tick two boxes, first I have a show next year and I would like to have a large collection of small random oils to hang together which accounts for one of the paintings. The other is my latest attempt to find a way to describe the figure whilst only being loosely attached to reality, in other words to paint the painting as much as painting the figure. The proportions vary and sometimes you have more figure than painting and in this case more painting than figure. It interests me to see how far the notion of figure can be stretched and last night Matthew, I was Keith Vaughan.

December 01, 2012

I believe that all people approach
experience from their own preconceptions. We as artists, come to life-drawing
sessions having pretty well rehearsed in our minds what our response is going
to be, particularly when we have worked from the model previously. Our
intentions will be already well informed.

That is why working with Justin, our young and sadly only
black model, was such a fresh and challenging experience. There was a special
excitement and edge to our efforts - we were not able to follow the habitual
procedures in dealing with light, tone, colour and form. All had to be
discovered and explored anew. This effort was sustained to the end without the
falling away of endeavour that so often happens as we and the model get tired.
I don't know how many times on previous occasions I have felt I had lost my
grip with the piece of work as the session concluded but this time, although I
had problems, the contact was maintained.

I found Tom's work very interesting in
its evolution. It was as if Justin was an inspiration which enabled Tom to
immediately, without hesitation, take the experience away into the realms of
his own creative functioning with a great freedom and authority. He had made a
dynamic connection which set Justin free from the restrictions of his pose. The
figure was skewed, off balance and in movement. I was reminded of Tom's earlier
metaphysical compositions with their tormented figures occupying their own
world. Tom wrote of his work as "…fluctuating from the literal to
uncertainty…" " my paintings
pose a series of questions or provocations…" This was the case with his depiction of
Justin taken out of his real situation and given new significance. He later
told me that he had acquired Justin as one of his latest series of 'figures on
the beach' - a raw beachboy energy.

In their own ways this same transmuting
process was reflected in Sandra's hacking away to give an almost primitive
energy to the form, and with the poetic and meditative treatment by Emma. These
images stand in their own right - released from the context of the life-room.

On the other hand there were those of us
who elected to stay firmly objective in our approach, and no less worthy of
appraisal. Roger's and Tony's drawings had a real intensity which lifted them
to a heightened level. Lois and Fiona constructed strong plastic equivalents of
their subject in their respective media. Chris, Joanne and myself endeavoured
to substitute paint for flesh and reconstruct
the real presence of Justin there in front of us. I would love to have
seen what other regulars - Russell, Roger S.
et al - would have made of it. However Justin is to make a further
attendance on 3rd January so there is that to look forward to.

All in all - I thought the session was a
knock-out - almost literally in my case after a final close encounter between
my head and Tom's printing press.